crab66:I am nervous just watching this guy fark around with this stuff.

Darwin is watching.

/I'll admit, i don't know allot about electricity, but I DO know you don't want to fark around with it, esp if you're not trained in its properties, and what you can and can't get away with. I was surprised that he was using bare hands to lay METAL BARS across live terminals, and didn't get roasted. Anyone know why? Farkers with the knowledge please explain.

Seems like it's really low voltage to go with the high amperage. Not nearly as impressive as high voltage with high amperage. Laying a screwdriver across the terminals of a car battery would give a similar result until it melted the terminals or overheated the battery.

And, as with many of these videos I have to doubt he's pushing the power he thinks he is.

With that small spark the secondary voltage must be low, I'm kind of doubting the 50,000 amps thing too. So many things wrong here but mainly red hot metal and flying sparks over carpet, this will not end well.

crab66:I am nervous just watching this guy fark around with this stuff.

Darwin is watching.

Yeah, I did. And that was....odd? I can't think of what else you'd use that for outside of testing some basic principles of electromagnetism. And why'd he go to the bother of building it, and then not crimp the lugs is beyond me. Maybe he didn't know how?

Bit'O'Gristle:I'll admit, i don't know allot about electricity, but I DO know you don't want to fark around with it, esp if you're not trained in its properties, and what you can and can't get away with. I was surprised that he was using bare hands to lay METAL BARS across live terminals, and didn't get roasted. Anyone know why? Farkers with the knowledge please explain.

Same as all electricity- it's looking for a path to ground. The ground is a very low potential, and electrified objects are very high potential. If you know for certain that you don't provide a path to ground then you can rub your junk all over electrical equipment and nary a future child would be lost. In the case of the metal bar/screwdriver, there is no path to ground through him, but there is across the transformer bus bars. The electricity moves along the metal bar from bus bar to bus bar and then exits- you can see this in how the bar is glowing hot between the bus bars but not otherwise.

As he says in the video, his setup is very low voltage. High voltage is what causes electricity to arc through air (e.g. lightning or a stun gun), so he can actually be relatively certain that it's safe to be around and handle that particular transformer, specifically because the voltage is so low. If anything, the fact that he's handling it the way he does tells me that he really knows exactly what he's doing. The only part of the video I had a problem with was when he reaches around/over the transformer to adjust the equipment on the left side of the video, because if he had fallen across the bus bars it would have been game over for him.

Additionally, the capacity of common residential service in the US is 100~200amps. In the UK, I would suspect it might be toward the lower end. It looks like this guy is working in a residential space, so assume 200 amps. So if the voltage is 240, and the amps are 200 that results in....48000 watts. Pretty close to the 50000 watts that are claimed in the headline. Well, if they confused watts with amps. However, he said in the video that he was only working with 0.5V and there is a visible voltage adjusting device in the video that is adjustable.

So, the maximum wattage that will flow into a normal house with a 200 amp service at 240 volt is 240*200=48000watts. You can't increase the amps!

ski9600:ski9600: Tony_Pepperoni: There is no way that was 50,000 amps.

Well, Amps equals volts divided by watts. FFIO

Additionally, the capacity of common residential service in the US is 100~200amps. In the UK, I would suspect it might be toward the lower end. It looks like this guy is working in a residential space, so assume 200 amps. So if the voltage is 240, and the amps are 200 that results in....48000 watts. Pretty close to the 50000 watts that are claimed in the headline. Well, if they confused watts with amps. However, he said in the video that he was only working with 0.5V and there is a visible voltage adjusting device in the video that is adjustable.

So, the maximum wattage that will flow into a normal house with a 200 amp service at 240 volt is 240*200=48000watts. You can't increase the amps!

You CAN increase the amps if you lower the volts. 240 volts at 200amps is 48000watts, so 48000 watts divided by 48000amps means 1volt on the output.

LumberJack:ski9600: ski9600: Tony_Pepperoni: There is no way that was 50,000 amps.

Well, Amps equals volts divided by watts. FFIO

Additionally, the capacity of common residential service in the US is 100~200amps. In the UK, I would suspect it might be toward the lower end. It looks like this guy is working in a residential space, so assume 200 amps. So if the voltage is 240, and the amps are 200 that results in....48000 watts. Pretty close to the 50000 watts that are claimed in the headline. Well, if they confused watts with amps. However, he said in the video that he was only working with 0.5V and there is a visible voltage adjusting device in the video that is adjustable.

So, the maximum wattage that will flow into a normal house with a 200 amp service at 240 volt is 240*200=48000watts. You can't increase the amps!

You CAN increase the amps if you lower the volts. 240 volts at 200amps is 48000watts, so 48000 watts divided by 48000amps means 1volt on the output.

It doesn't work like that.Reducing the voltage reduces current which reduces power.Order of operations, you suck at it...

China White Tea:Ianman: You CAN increase the amps if you lower the volts. 240 volts at 200amps is 48000watts, so 48000 watts divided by 48000amps means 1volt on the output.

It doesn't work like that.Reducing the voltage reduces current which reduces power.Order of operations, you suck at it...

I'm not sure if you're trolling, or if you're just ignorant to the point that you're completely oblivious to how much you don't know.

Came here to say this. Preeeeeeeeeeety sure all that schooling and my subsequent degree, let alone physics, says you're wrong, Ian. It's certainly more complicated than just dropping the voltage and magically getting an increase in amperage but that's where his transformer steps in, forgive the pun. Given a load (a short, in this case) that will take the available amount of power (~48 KiloWatts, in this case), that is exactly how it works.

LumberJack:China White Tea: Ianman: You CAN increase the amps if you lower the volts. 240 volts at 200amps is 48000watts, so 48000 watts divided by 48000amps means 1volt on the output.

It doesn't work like that.Reducing the voltage reduces current which reduces power.Order of operations, you suck at it...

I'm not sure if you're trolling, or if you're just ignorant to the point that you're completely oblivious to how much you don't know.

Came here to say this. Preeeeeeeeeeety sure all that schooling and my subsequent degree, let alone physics, says you're wrong, Ian. It's certainly more complicated than just dropping the voltage and magically getting an increase in amperage but that's where his transformer steps in, forgive the pun. Given a load (a short, in this case) that will take the available amount of power (~48 KiloWatts, in this case), that is exactly how it works.

Ianman:LumberJack: China White Tea: Ianman: You CAN increase the amps if you lower the volts. 240 volts at 200amps is 48000watts, so 48000 watts divided by 48000amps means 1volt on the output.

It doesn't work like that.Reducing the voltage reduces current which reduces power.Order of operations, you suck at it...

I'm not sure if you're trolling, or if you're just ignorant to the point that you're completely oblivious to how much you don't know.

Came here to say this. Preeeeeeeeeeety sure all that schooling and my subsequent degree, let alone physics, says you're wrong, Ian. It's certainly more complicated than just dropping the voltage and magically getting an increase in amperage but that's where his transformer steps in, forgive the pun. Given a load (a short, in this case) that will take the available amount of power (~48 KiloWatts, in this case), that is exactly how it works.

Provide the maths please...

I already have, so have others. You're not getting it. Or you're trolling me successfully.

His transformer is a step-down transformer which does exactly that... steps down (guessing) 240 Volts to about 1 Volt.

There's not 50,000 Amps coming out of the wall, but there's 48,000 Watts coming out of the wall. There's not 240 Volts going across his load, but there's 48,000 Watts going through his load.

The power company puts out electricity at 131,000 Volts (or whatever) but not a huge amount of amps. Before it gets to your house, the Voltage is stepped down, probably several times, using the same concept as is shown in this video which, at the same time, steps up the Amperage available. But the Wattage, minus some line and transformer losses, is the same at your house as it was at the power plant. Your 240 Volt 200 Amp service at your house leaves the power plant as 131,000 Volts at 0.366 Amps (48,000 / 131,000). In the end, whether you take 240 * 200 or 131,000 * 0.366, you get 48,000 Watts either way.